Imagine living in a world with no freedom, choice, individuality, and color. Would you want to live in a world like this? Most of you would have said no, but a boy named Jonas has no choice, but to adhere to his community’s rules. In the book and the movie, “The Giver”, by Louis Lowery, Jonas finds it difficult to accept his community’s way of life. However, after he becomes the receiver of memory, he challenges the community after discovering what the world used to be like before sameness. In order to truly know what the movie or the novel did well or awful on, we must first consider the following criteria, characters, plot, and the setting.
We shall first compare and contrast the plot of both the novel and the movie. In the movie Jonas
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In the book, the story takes place in what could be near present day. However, in the movie the community is extremely sophisticated with their technology, that it makes the novel seem like it's taking place in a completely different century. To get the purpose of the book across, the filmmakers didn’t have to advance the community, therefore I believe the book has a superior setting. One similarity is, the book and movie had a similar interpretation for elsewhere. Each of the descriptions is bare wilderness, without civilization for miles. By means of suffering, the book’s description of elsewhere seemed harsher due to Jonas’s lack of a motorcycle and he has limited supplies.
In conclusion, the novel and the movie both did a great job in communicating the main story of The Giver. However, I feel that the movie did better in terms of plot and characterization. On the other hand, the book had a better setting. Based on my criteria, I come to the conclusion that the movie version of The Giver is superior to the book in these two ways. The main reason I believe the movie is better than the book is because it made me feel more in the perspective of Jonas, instead of a bystander. Without freedom, choice ,color , or individuality, life just would be meaningless and